Monday, February 8, 2010

What's the difference between Chocolate Cream Pie Ice Cream and Chocolate Ice Cream you say? Well, the difference is that I took a chocolate cream pie mishap and turned it into ice cream 2 days later. The result? Fantastic!

On Saturday I was making a chocolate cream pie using the Homesick Texan's delicious looking recipe for a dinner party we were having. Something happened in the custard-thickening process and it just never thickened. I thought it was good when I saw a top film that seemed thick enough, but boy was I wrong when I poured it into the pie shell. It was like chocolate milk! The meringue which I knew I did wrong came out correctly, go figure. I baked the pie in hopes of some kind of thickening in the oven. No luck. So I threw it in the fridge for a couple of hours. Again, no luck on the custardy filling even getting to the pudding stage! Needless to say, I did not serve dessert to my guests.

I tasted the runny pie and deemed it a delicious soup. Then today I decided I'd buy some heavy whipping cream and see if I could turn it into ice cream. It had all the right ingredients and I thought it just might work. I scraped off the meringue and threw it away. I poured the chocolate filling into a pyrex, added a cup of whipping cream and stirred. I poured the whole mess into the ice cream maker and viola! 20 minutes later I had a creamy light chocolate ice cream. I added pieces of pie crust at the very end for a little hint of what it used to be. Delicious! I highly recommend it--the one thing--you have to mess up the pie in order to get this to work.

Directions (I think)1.Mix together all ingredients through eggs with whisk. Heat over medium until it thickens slightly to coat the back of spoon.2. Meanwhile, poke holes in pie crust with fork. Bake pie crust for 20 minutes at 400 degrees or according to package directions3. Remove chocolate mixture from heat, add butter and vanilla and stir until butter is melted.4. Place chocolate mixture in the refrigerator and chill until well cooled.5. Break pie crust into bite-sized pieces, set aside.6. Prepare ice cream maker. Mix 1 C heavy cream with the chocolate mixture and pour into ice cream maker. Freeze for 20 minutes. With two minutes remaining, add pie crust pieces.7. Scrape ice cream into container and freeze until ready to eat.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

There is no shortage of pasta sauce types and flavors in the grocery store, but sometimes I don't want to pay $4-5 for a jar that I will use only a quarter of. What if the flavor ends up being terrible? Last night, I needed to use up some hot Italian sausage so I thought I'd whip up a pasta sauce of my own. It turned out pretty well actually--a smokey flavor because of one unusual star...bacon.

Applewood bacon is all the rage at restaurants these days. A selling point for burgers, cobb salad and BLTs. We got a pound of it last week from Trader Joe's and it turned out that applewood smoked bacon, while it has a lot of flavor, is also a lot more fat than actual porky bits. As a result finding a use for it was tough, so adding it to the pasta sauce seemed like a good decision. It really does bring a twist.

Mac & Cheese & More

A "freestyle" food blog

Welcome!

This blog is a fun way for us to see what is going on in each other's kitchens! A collection of recipes old & new. We based it on our favorite Mac & Cheese dish that was handed down to us by our Mother/Grandma, Beverly.